I have not read through the emails to establish the context. But this selection will strengthen strong suspicions that a tight group of insiders have treated a questionable scientific theory as a cause that needs to by hyped:

(1939) Thorne/MetO:

Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical
troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a
wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the
uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these
further if necessary…
(3066) Thorne:

I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it
which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.

(1611) Carter:

It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much
talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by
a select core group.

(2884) Wigley:

Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive… there have been a number of
dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC …
(4755) Overpeck:

The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s
included and what is left out.

(3456) Overpeck:

I agree (with) Susan (Solomon) that we should try to put more in the bullet about
“Subsequent evidence” … Need to convince readers that there really has been
an increase in knowledge – more evidence. What is it?

(1104) Wanner/NCCR:

In my [IPCC-TAR] review […] I criticized…the Mann hockey(s)tick …My review was
classified “unsignificant” even I inquired several times. Now the
internationally well known newspaper SPIEGEL got the information about these
early statements because I expressed my opinion in several talks, mainly in
Germany, in 2002 and 2003. I just refused to give an exclusive interview to
SPIEGEL because I will not cause damage for climate science.

… idea of looking at the implications of climate change for what he termed
“global icons” …One of these suggested icons was the Great Barrier Reef …
It also became apparent that there was always a local “reason” for the
destruction – cyclones, starfish, fertilizers… A perception of an
“unchanging” environment leads people to generate local explanations for coral
loss based on transient phenomena, while not acknowledging the possibility of
systematic damage from long-term climatic-environmental change … Such a
project could do a lot to raise awareness of threats to the reef from climate
change

<3373> Bradley: I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year
“reconstruction”.

<3115> Mann: By the way, when is Tom C going to formally publish his roughly 1500 year
reconstruction??? It would help the cause to be able to refer to that
reconstruction as confirming Mann and Jones, etc.

<3940> Mann: They will (see below) allow us to provide some discussion of the synthetic
example, referring to the J. Cimate paper (which should be finally accepted
upon submission of the revised final draft), so that should help the cause a
bit.

<0810> Mann: I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she think’s she’s
doing, but its not helping the cause

<2440> Jones: I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the
process

<2094> Briffa: UEA does not hold the very vast majority of mine [potentially FOIable emails] anyway which I copied onto private storage after the completion of the IPCC
task.

<1577> Jones:

[FOI, temperature data]
Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we
get – and has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main funder (US
Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original
station data.

UPDATE 4

A message from the leaker, left in the ReadMe file:

/// FOIA 2011 — Background and Context ///

“Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.”

“Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and related causes.”

Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical
troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a
wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the
uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these
further if necessary…
(3066) Thorne:

I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it
which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.

<4141> Minns/Tyndall Centre:

In my experience, global warming freezing is already a bit of a public
relations problem with the media

Kjellen:

I agree with Nick that climate change might be a better labelling than global
warming

The fact that the Medieval times were warmer is another problem:

<5111> Pollack:

But it will be very difficult to make the MWP go away in Greenland.

<5039> Rahmstorf:

You chose to depict the one based on C14 solar data, which kind of stands out
in Medieval times. It would be much nicer to show the version driven by Be10
solar forcing

<5096> Cook:

A growing body of evidence clearly shows [2008] that hydroclimatic variability
during the putative MWP (more appropriately and inclusively called the
“Medieval Climate Anomaly” or MCA period) was more regionally extreme (mainly
in terms of the frequency and duration of megadroughts) than anything we have
seen in the 20th century, except perhaps for the Sahel. So in certain ways the
MCA period may have been more climatically extreme than in modern times.

Better not let the public know of the doubts:

<0310> Warren:

The results for 400 ppm stabilization look odd in many cases […] As it stands
we’ll have to delete the results from the paper if it is to be published.

<1682> Wils:

[2007] What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural
fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably […]
<2267> Wilson:

Although I agree that GHGs are important in the 19th/20th century (especially
since the 1970s), if the weighting of solar forcing was stronger in the models,
surely this would diminish the significance of GHGs.
[…] it seems to me that by weighting the solar irradiance more strongly in the
models, then much of the 19th to mid 20th century warming can be explained from
the sun alone.

<5289> Hoskins:

If the tropical near surface specific humidity over tropical land has not gone
up (Fig 5) presumably that could explain why the expected amplification of the
warming in the tropics with height has not really been detected.

<5315> Jenkins/MetO:

would you agree that there is no convincing evidence for kilimanjaro glacier
melt being due to recent warming (let alone man-made warming)?

<2292> Jones:

[tropical glaciers] There is a small problem though with their retreat. They
have retreated a lot in the last 20 years yet the MSU2LT data would suggest
that temperatures haven’t increased at these levels.

<1788> Jones:

There shouldn’t be someone else at UEA with different views [from “recent
extreme weather is due to global warming”] – at least not a climatologist.

<4693> Crowley:

I am not convinced that the “truth” is always worth reaching if it is at the
cost of damaged personal relationships

<2967> Briffa:

Also there is much published evidence for Europe (and France in particular) of
increasing net primary productivity in natural and managed woodlands that may
be associated either with nitrogen or increasing CO2 or both. Contrast this
with the still controversial question of large-scale acid-rain-related forest
decline? To what extent is this issue now generally considered urgent, or even
real?

<2733> Crowley:

Phil, thanks for your thoughts – guarantee there will be no dirty laundry in
the open.

<2095> Steig:

He’s skeptical that the warming is as great as we show in East Antarctica — he
thinks the “right” answer is more like our detrended results in the
supplementary text. I cannot argue he is wrong.

<0953> Jones:

This will reduce the 1940-1970 cooling in NH temps. Explaining the cooling with
sulphates won’t be quite as necessary.

<4944> Haimberger:

It is interesting to see the lower tropospheric warming minimum in the tropics
in all three plots, which I cannot explain. I believe it is spurious but it is
remarkably robust against my adjustment efforts.

<4262> Klein/LLNL:

Does anybody have an explanation why there is a relative minimum (and some
negative trends) between 500 and 700 hPa? No models with significant surface
warming do this

<2461> Osborn:

This is an excellent idea, Mike, IN PRINCIPLE at least. In practise, however,
it raises some interesting results […] the analysis will not likely lie near to
the middle of the cloud of published series and explaining the reasons behind
this etc. will obscure the message of a short EOS piece.

<4470> Norwegian Meteorological Institute:

In Norway and Spitsbergen, it is possible to explain most of the warming after
the 1960s by changes in the atmospheric circulation. The warming prior to 1940
cannot be explained in this way.

any method that incorporates all forms of uncertainty and error will
undoubtedly result in reconstructions with wider error bars than we currently
have. These many be more honest, but may not be too helpful for model
comparison attribution studies. We need to be careful with the wording I think.

<4165> Jones:

what he [Zwiers] has done comes to a different conclusion than Caspar and Gene!
I reckon this can be saved by careful wording.

<3994> Mitchell/MetO

Is the PCA approach robust? Are the results statistically significant? It seems
to me that in the case of MBH the answer in each is no

<4241> Wilson:

I thought I’d play around with some randomly generated time-series and see if I
could ‘reconstruct’ northern hemisphere temperatures.
[…] The reconstructions clearly show a ‘hockey-stick’ trend. I guess this is
precisely the phenomenon that Macintyre has been going on about.

<3373> Bradley:

I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should
never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year
“reconstruction”.

<4758> Osborn:

Because how can we be critical of Crowley for throwing out 40-years in the
middle of his calibration, when we’re throwing out all post-1960 data ‘cos the
MXD has a non-temperature signal in it, and also all pre-1881 or pre-1871 data
‘cos the temperature data may have a non-temperature signal in it!

<0886> Esper:

Now, you Keith complain about the way we introduced our result, while saying it
is an important one. […] the IPCC curve needs to be improved according to
missing long-term declining trends/signals, which were removed (by
dendrochronologists!) before Mann merged the local records together. So, why
don’t you want to let the result into science?

<4369> Cook:

I am afraid that Mike is defending something that increasingly can not be
defended. He is investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the
science move ahead.

Is this faith or is this science?

<4394> Houghton [MetO, IPCC co-chair]

[…] we dont take seriously enough our God-given responsibility to care for the
Earth […] 500 million people are expected to watch The Day After Tomorrow. We
must pray that they pick up that message.

<0999> Hulme:

My work is as Director of the national centre for climate change research, a
job which requires me to translate my Christian belief about stewardship of
God’s planet into research and action.

<3653> Hulme:

He [another Met scientist] is a Christian and would talk authoritatively about
the state of climate science from the sort of standpoint you are wanting.

Those climate models just aren’t working out:

<5131> Shukla/IGES:

[“Future of the IPCC”, 2008] It is inconceivable that policymakers will be
willing to make billion-and trillion-dollar decisions for adaptation to the
projected regional climate change based on models that do not even describe and
simulate the processes that are the building blocks of climate variability.

<2423> Lanzante/NOAA:

While perhaps one could designate some subset of models as being poorer in a
lot of areas, there probably never will be a single universally superior model
or set of models. We should keep in mind that the climate system is complex, so
that it is difficult, if not impossible to define a metric that captures the
breath of physical processes relevant to even a narrow area of focus.

<1982> Santer:

there is no individual model that does well in all of the SST and water vapor
tests we’ve applied.

<0850> Barnett:

[IPCC AR5 models] clearly, some tuning or very good luck involved. I doubt the
modeling world will be able to get away with this much longer

<5066> Hegerl:

[IPCC AR5 models]
So using the 20th c for tuning is just doing what some people have long
suspected us of doing […] and what the nonpublished diagram from NCAR showing
correlation between aerosol forcing and sensitivity also suggested.

<4443> Jones:

Basic problem is that all models are wrong – not got enough middle and low
level clouds.

<4085> Jones:

GKSS is just one model and it is a model, so there is no need for it to be
correct.

Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10’s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am. He is also heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of radio station MTR 1377, and his book Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

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Henry Opukahai'a was an orphan raised by his uncle to be a pagan priest but he became disillusioned with rituals and chants. He fled Hawaii in 1807 with his friend Thomas Hopu on the American whaling ship Triumph bound for New England. They were befriended by Christian students at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, who instructed and prayed with them to be […]